


Besties for Life

by KennaM



Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: Best Friends, Childhood Friends, F/F, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Love Confessions, Marriage Proposal, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-09 23:21:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6928348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KennaM/pseuds/KennaM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lizzie Bennet is only in second grade but her mom already acts like she'll never find a husband or get married - so she proposes to her friend just to shut her up. Besides, if she's never going to find a husband, then why bother looking?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Besties for Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [candyvan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/candyvan/gifts).



Lizzie is seven years old when she takes Charlotte’s hand and asks her best friend to marry her. It’s recess and the autumn air is getting cooler, but Charlotte’s hand feels warm, and Lizzie imagines spending the rest of her life with her. She also imagines her mom, relieved that she’s solved her husband search so quickly. Charlotte looks surprised, but her answer is yes.

“Perfect,” Lizzie says. “Neither of us has to bother with looking for husbands now.” She squeezes her friends fingers between her own, and pulls up closer to Charlotte. “This is so easy. Why do grown-ups have to make everything so confusing?”

“You’re the one making a big deal of your Halloween costume,” Charlotte says. She laughs and tugs lightly on Lizzie’s long black costume sleeve.

“It’s not just this, Char,” Lizzie says, indignant. “Mom wants me to find a boyfriend – a _boyfriend_. Ew. Why would I want one of those? All the boys are gross.” Lizzie and Charlotte glance across the playground to where Ricky Collins is playing kickball with the boys from another class, and they stick their tongues out.

“Yeah,” Charlotte says, “I don’t think I ever want a boyfriend.”

“Me neither.”

After school they’re still holding hands, waiting by the gate for Jane. She doesn’t say anything about it as they walk home, and Lizzie doesn’t tell her the good news. She wants to tell everyone all at once.

Lizzie’s mom practically faints when she does. “This way I won’t have to look for a husband,” Lizzie says, trying to decipher the expression on her mom’s face. “So you don’t have to worry anymore. I’ll just have a wife. OK?”

Her dad is giving her mom a look and moments ago Lizzie felt confident in this plan, but now she isn’t so sure. She feels Charlotte squeeze her fingers again, sees Lydia playing with her dolls and ignoring them, and finally Jane speaks up. “Girls can’t marry girls,” Jane says, looking at their dad to make sure that’s right.

“Why?” Lizzie asks.

“Because…” Jane starts, but then she frowns.

“Sweetie,” Lizzie’s dad finally says. He puts his newspaper down in his lap. “You’re a bit too young to be worried about getting married. You’ve got years to make up your mind.”

“Oh,” is all Lizzie says. That doesn’t make sense. Just this morning her mom thought she was plenty old enough to be planning her wedding, but now mom is nodding vigorously, and Lizzie feels a bit ashamed, and she doesn’t know why. She and Charlotte let go of each others’ hands.

* * *

Lizzie thinks about that day when she’s fourteen, in high school, preparing for the winter formal. She doesn’t have anyone to go with and they’re only freshmen, but she really wants to go. She knows Charlotte hasn’t been asked either, and Lizzie thinks to herself, _Charlotte and I could just go together_.

“Like a friend date,” she clarifies when she brings the idea up during lunch. The lunchroom is loud and she isn’t sure Charlotte heard her, but she doesn’t want to repeat herself. “We’ve still got a week to get asked, but just in case no one does, y’know? We don’t need dates, right?”

Charlotte almost forgets to swallow her public school mush before answering. “R-right, yeah,” she says. She reaches for her bottle of water. “Cool.”

Lizzie’s cheeks warm. “It’s no big deal,” she insists. “We could still get asked out. But I don’t want to miss the formal just because of some antiquated date rules.”

“Yeah,” Charlotte says again. Lizzie frowns and she thinks about that day, years ago, when they held hands. They’re still affectionate friends but they haven’t held hands since; hand-holding is for boy-girl relationships. She doesn’t want Charlotte to get the wrong idea.

“We could ask Kayla if she wants to come, and Sammy. Make it a group thing.”

Charlotte meets Lizzie’s eyes finally, and Lizzie tries not to think about how forced her smile looks. “That sounds fun,” Charlotte says. “We should go dress shopping tomorrow.”

Lizzie immediately brightens. This is normal. This sounds normal. “I can already see how jealous Lydia will be,” she says.

* * *

Charlotte mentions it during a sleepover. The lights are off and they’re whispering because Mrs. Lu told them to go to sleep hours ago, and Lizzie’s eyes hurt from crying. Her first real breakup, and Charlotte had insisted Lizzie sleep over when she found out. She hadn’t even known about the boy until a week after the first date. For some reason, Lizzie hadn’t wanted to tell her.

“Remember when we were younger, and everything was so much _easier_?” Lizzie had whispered. She stared up at the red light on the fire detector, the only point of light in the room, and willed herself to become a child again.

“When boys were all gross?” Charlotte asks. “And we could just play all day without worrying about…” Charlotte’s voice trails off. Lizzie swallows. “…Getting jobs?” Charlotte finally finishes. “Or trying to get into college?”

“Yeah,” Lizzie says. She doesn’t want to think about any of that.

“Do you remember,” Charlotte asks after a moment, “that year we spent our entire spring break watching old black and white romantic comedies? And any time your mom said we needed to go outside and be kids, we’d just come to my house and keep going?”

“Yeah,” Lizzie says. That was only last year but it feels so long ago.

“Or when we followed Jane on her first date, and sat behind them in the movie theater so we could ‘make sure he didn’t try anything’? And she totally saw us but never said anything?”

“Yeah,” Lizzie says.

“And there was that time we wanted to join Neopets but we weren’t old enough, so we made a fake email and just started a joint account. Because our combined ages made us old enough or something?”

Lizzie smiles. “Yeah,” she says.

Charlotte pauses for a moment. “And the time you got so frustrated at your mom saying you’d never find a husband, so you proposed to me on the school playground?”

“Yeah,” Lizzie says, again, practically choking.

They’re both quiet. Lizzie doesn’t know what to say, can hardly remember how words work. She wants, so badly, to hold Charlotte’s hand again. To hear her say that everything will be alright. At the very least she wants to look over at Charlotte’s face, but she can’t see it in the dark, and she doesn’t know if she’ll like what she sees there. She settles for staring up at the fire detector. The sound of Charlotte breathing is just audible over Lizzie’s own heartbeat.

“Being a kid was so much easier,” Charlotte finally whispers.

“Yeah,” Lizzie says.

* * *

“What if I _don’t_ find a husband?” Lizzie says to her mom, almost an adult. It’s partly out of spite, mostly because she’s sick of her mother’s repeated rant, and a little bit because she can’t get the image of Charlotte’s smile out of her head.

“I don’t want you to be _alone_ ,” Lizzie’s mom moans. Lizzie has to physically restrain herself from rolling her eyes. Like she’d believe for one minute that her mom’s really only worried for her sake.

“What if I found a wife instead?” Her cheeks heat up, saying those words aloud for the first time in a decade. “It’s legal in some states.”

In her nervousness she wants to ramble, but she sees the look on her mom’s face and her gut twists up. She mentally berates herself for opening her mouth, and knows that there’s no way she could’ve kept it shut any longer.

“Elizabeth Bennet,” her mom says. “That is _not_ something to joke about.”

Lizzie doesn’t want to, but she says, “What if I’m not joking?”

Her mom’s mouth falls open, but she quickly schools her expression. “Lizzie,” she asks, slowly, “are you gay?”

“No,” Lizzie answers automatically, and crosses her arms. _I don’t know_.

But that’s it, she finally realizes. She doesn’t know. She’s never given it a lot of thought. She’s dated boys, though not as many as Lydia, and she’s never considered dating girls, but? “I just mean theoretically,” she says with a frown, picturing Charlotte laughing. Her heart flutters

But they’re _best friends_. It’s normal to feel this way about your best friend, right? It doesn’t mean anything.

“Because you know,” Lizzie’s mom says while Lizzie tries to shake the image, “it would be OK. If you were.”

“Well I’m not,” Lizzie insists, and she turns to leave the kitchen, to end this conversation. “And I’m not getting married anytime soon. I just started college.”

This is the time Lizzie’s mom normally reminds her that _she’d_ gotten married her second year of college. Except this time she says nothing, just allows Lizzie to stalk back to her room.

Lizzie Bennet _can’t_ have a crush on Charlotte Lu. It wouldn’t be fair, to Charlotte or herself, to their 18 years of friendship. She can’t throw all that down the drain because she confused normal best friend love for something… else.

She slumps down on her bed and groans in frustration. She pictures Charlotte’s smile again, and remembers the warmth of her hand all those years ago, and wants to cry. _There’s nothing wrong with liking girls_ , she tries to remind herself. _It’s perfectly OK. But it’s not me_.

* * *

“I would totally make out with her,” Lizzie says during spring break, without thinking about it. They’re both lounging across the couch, spending their precious free time watching mindless TV dramas. As soon as the words leave her mouth she remembers she hasn’t yet told Charlotte, and the familiar knot in her stomach comes back.

Charlotte looks at her sharply. “What?” she says. Lizzie tries to shrug it off.

“Lady Sybil,” she says, and gestures towards the TV screen. The character comes back on and Lizzie’s struck again by how attractive the actress is. “She’s the cutest of the sisters. Not that physical beauty is the most important character trait, of course, but. I like her best. I’d make out with her. If I had to pick,” she adds in a quieter voice.

“Oh,” is all Charlotte says at first. Lizzie doesn’t know what’s come over her. She’s been dancing around the issue for months, and doing a pretty decent job of it. She tells Charlotte almost everything but she hadn’t told _anyone_ about this. She doesn’t want to make things awkward.

“I think Mary’s the cutest,” Charlotte finally says. She’s smiling, softly, and doesn’t say anything else. Years ago Lizzie might have pressed her to explain why, but now she’s silent. They just sit, and keep watching.

* * *

It’s now or never, Lizzie finally decides. She’s too embarrassed to look Charlotte in the eye but she can’t put this off any longer. She needs to tell Charlotte how she feels, and if it changes anything between them… then at least they both deserve to know.

The bedroom door is closed so they can pretend they’re alone, and Charlotte sits by Lizzie’s side on the bed, waiting. She probably has no clue what Lizzie’s building up to. Lizzie takes a deep breath.

“I think,” she says haltingly, wringing her hands, feeling the heat of Charlotte’s confused stare, “that I maybe, might, have a, kinda, crush. On you. Charlotte.”

Lizzie doesn’t dare look up, just stares at her bare feet. Her toes are painted the color Charlotte picked out a week ago. That same color is chipping on her nails, and she forces herself not to scratch at them further. Lizzie hears Charlotte moving beside her, shuffling on the quilt. Moving away? Closer? Is she freaked out?

“Oh,” Charlotte finally says.

“Yeah,” Lizzie says back.

Her heart is pounding. She drops her hands to her sides to steady herself, bracing her palms against the mattress. Part of her is relieved, because Charlotte needed to know. They need to decide what to do now.

“I kinda,” Charlotte starts to say, then pauses. Lizzie chances a glance over, and Charlotte’s frowning, chewing her bottom lip. Lizzie swallows her instinct to interrupt, change the subject, start rambling. “I kinda do too?”

Charlotte’s staring down at her palms, tracing a line with her thumbnail, pointedly avoiding Lizzie’s gaze. Color rises to her cheeks. “Not with me,” she adds quickly, with a small fake laugh. “That would be, ha. That would be weird. I, uh.”

Charlotte glances over and their eyes finally meet. Lizzie wants to glance away, embarrassed, but Charlotte also looks embarrassed, and Lizzie feels like she should comfort her, and _what_?

“Uh,” Lizzie says, her face heating up. Charlotte cracks a small smile, then a chuckle, and Lizzie feels laughter rising out of herself as well. “That’s, uh,” she tries again, giggling. “Good.”

“Yeah,” Charlotte says, giggling herself. “I didn’t think you, uh. You know.”

“I didn’t think _you_ ,” Lizzie counters, and laughs more loudly. The absurdity of it all is starting to hit her now, and she still can’t stare too long into Charlotte’s eyes. Charlotte keeps tracing lines on her palm and all Lizzie wants to do right now is hold that hand. “How long have we been friends?” she asks instead.

“Twenty-one years,” Charlotte answers instantly.

“How is it we’re always on the same page about everything?”

Charlotte looks into Lizzie’s eyes and grins. “I don’t know,” she says. She reaches out slowly and sets a hand down on top of Lizzie's. Her skin is clammy, and warm, and feels like love. “Besties for life?” Charlotte offers.

Lizzie turns her hand to interweave her fingers with Charlotte’s. “Yeah,” she says. “Besties for life.”

They smile stupidly at each other for a moment and Lizzie feels embarrassed again, but mostly she feels happy. So happy, like she hasn’t been in such a long, long time. And scared, that this isn’t really happening. “Just to clarify,” she says before she can stop herself, “this means we’re dating, right?”

“ _Yes_. Dork.” Charlotte laughs, and Lizzie laughs, and Charlotte’s squeezing her fingers, and Lizzie can’t help but lean forward an inch, feeling the urge to kiss her.

She stops herself before she goes too far, and asks, quietly, “Does that mean I can kiss you?” She isn't sure if she's just seeing things, but she thinks Charlotte goes breathless at that.

“I’ve kind of been wanting you to for years,” Charlotte says.

Lizzie laughs again as she leans closer, feeling like an idiot. “Oh good,” she says. She can feel Charlotte’s breath on her cheek. “Because I’ve been _wanting_ to for years, so.”

“So what’s taking you so long?” Charlotte asks, giggling even as Lizzie presses their lips together.


End file.
